


The Loving Cup

by drinkbloodlikewine, whiskeyandspite



Series: The Odalisque Timestamps [25]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Bad BDSM Etiquette, Erotic Electrostimulation, Established Relationship, M/M, Medical Examination, Medical Kink, Prostate Milking, hannibal is just asking for a medical malpractice suit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-02
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-05-17 18:11:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5880742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drinkbloodlikewine/pseuds/drinkbloodlikewine, https://archiveofourown.org/users/whiskeyandspite/pseuds/whiskeyandspite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He just wanted to go for a walk today.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He just wanted to read a goddamn book.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Loving Cup

**Author's Note:**

  * For [trr_rr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trr_rr/gifts), [telera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/telera/gifts).



> Gifted with love and apologies to two writers we immensely admire, who enjoy med kink.
> 
> Unbeta'd, written over the span of a few hours after an eventful trip to the Museum of Sex. Enjoy (?)

Will hears the first click only distantly. He splays a hand across the bed beside him and finds it empty, the sheets cool beneath his fingers. The sound is like the release of a door catch, metal against metal, though he dozes off again before he can feel the warm morning breeze from the terrace or breathe in the first curl of smoke as Hannibal takes his morning cigarette.

The second click is somewhat louder and Will grumbles softly, dragging a hand over his eyes. He turns fitfully to his other side and jerks the soft sheets up around his bare shoulders. There’s another soft sound. And another.

He opens his eyes to glinting chrome, and squints against the sun’s blinding glare.

“Rest a little longer,” advises Hannibal, himself little more than a black shadow before the corona of light behind him. “You’ll need your energy today.”

It takes Will a moment to even realize where he is. They’ve taken to moving by season from one home to another. It's been barely three days since they got back to Greece. He blinks again and lifts his eyes to Hannibal once more.

He is dressed, though charmingly casually for Hannibal, in a well-tailored black button-down with the sleeves neatly folded to his elbows, and pressed grey slacks. He is taking his time setting out instruments against a tray with the concentration and love of someone partaking in a class of ikebana. Will hums as he exhales and with a groan turns back to his other side again.

“Did the basement flood or something?” He mumbles.

“No,” Hannibal says, his tone so light and agreeable that Will immediately tenses. “Though we could relocate there, if you’d prefer.”

“I would prefer to lay in bed and sleep.”

“Very well.”

Will opens his eyes again, and narrows them. Hannibal regards his evident mistrust with thinly-veiled delight, but smooths his smile away to linger only in the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. With a start, Will starts to lift himself from the bed but Hannibal catches him by the wrist to hold it flat against the mattress, and reaches with the other to lift the soft leather dopp kit so it doesn’t fall to the floor.

“Perhaps an opportunity to practice your breathing exercises while I finish preparing,” he suggests.

Will just glares, half awake still and already tensed to run or squirm or fight. He isn’t held tight, now, nor badly. One wrist and a lot of room to move before the other is snared. He could break free and run for it. Somewhere that isn't here until whatever mood has ensnared Hannibal on this otherwise entirely normal morning has passed with boredom and whim into the ocean breeze.

“What are you preparing?” Will asks, not tugging free yet. When he gets no answer he merely sighs. “I need to know which exercises to practice, if you demand I do at this ungodly hour. What are you doing?”

“You’ll need to relax in order for this to be an effective procedure, Will.”

“How the f-...” He stops, Hannibal’s gaze set on him until the curse passes, unspoken. “How am I supposed to relax when you won’t tell me anything? You’re being coy.”

At this accusation, however mild, Hannibal draws a deep and sighs slowly, put-upon. It’s helpful that Will is already bare - that he insists on it, really, shameless creature that he is. This would be eminently more difficult considering his upset already had he the decency to clothe himself with any sense of propriety.

Hannibal spares a glance to the restraints laid out on the other side of the tray, and hums low. “An examination, followed by an extraction. I need merely to sanitize the tools before we begin.”

Will blinks at him, expression entirely the opposite to Hannibal’s calm collected pleasure. Understandably, too, considering whenever Hannibal decides to play surgeon Will is hardly the recipient of something pleasant.

“Last I recall, I am entirely healthy,” he says dryly. “And all the limbs and organs I possess are meant to be there. Hannibal?”

“Yes?”

Will licks his lips and reverts to the lilting elegant French Hannibal enjoys speaking so much. “What the fuck are you thinking of doing?”

“Using a language other than your mother tongue to swear is still swearing,” Hannibal warns him.

He releases Will’s wrist only to smack him lightly across the cheek before returning to his work. The leather kit is lifted to rest beside the tray of glistening instruments, each in their place with an absorbent cloth laid beneath. He seeks for his rubbing alcohol and clean white cotton, and begins wiping down the tools one by one, with fastidious attention.

“I wish to extract, by way of direct electrical stimulation to the prostate, a substantial sample of your semen,” Hannibal says. “This will require not only the use of the probe itself, pulsed repeatedly in the range of twelve to twenty-four volts, but in addition, a speculum to ensure there is no contact against sensitive mucous membranes.” He turns a smile to his little wolf, held briefly rapt by the depthless breadth of his gaze. “Typically this procedure is carried out under a general anaesthetic, but I would be remiss to deprive you of the experience.”

Will blinks at him and snorts, pushing himself to sit up again, and though Hannibal’s eyes follow him he doesn’t grasp him to hold him down again. Will draws his hands through his hair and tugs it before stretching his arms up above his head.

“No,” he says simply, sniffing and stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. “Absolutely not. You want to extract semen? Fuck me. You do it often and hard enough and that experience I never wish to be deprived of. I don’t want to be some doll in your creepy medical fetish, we can get a boy for that.”

Hannibal hums, fingers stretching and curling and releasing again in a practiced restraint to stop from striking Will again - disobedience, crude remarks, disdain. All worthy of snaring one of the restraints to wrap around his throat until he recalls his decency. All worthy of a sharp slap struck across his mouth hard enough to swell his lips.

“Is that what you wish of me? So be it. I will spare you my quickly waning attention and find it renewed again by someone far more cooperative. Rather than your own, it is his taste I will savor, undoubtedly far sweeter than your own, fresh as summer strawberries.” Hannibal sets down an implement a little harder than he means to, and Will only just restrains from jumping at the clang of metal against metal.

“I’ll just give it to you,” Will says. “You don’t need tools for that!”

“Have I ever acted without reason, and well-considered decisions guiding my choices? Seemingly I have, if you doubt me. Go then. Enjoy your day. When I return with company this evening, you will remain downstairs and leave us undisturbed.”

Will just regards him with a look of exhausted resignation. He gets like this, now, when boredom pulls at him, when he seeks a hunt but doesn’t want to hunt. When he aches to hurt but only wants to hurt Will.

“The last time you claimed to act on good reason you took my appendix,” Will reminds him, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. “Which, need I remind you, was perfectly healthy at the time.”

“I merely sought to save you a potentially painful procedure later in life,” Hannibal replies, tone clipped.

“By putting me through that experience without sedation,” Will reminds him. “Charming. But suppose I allow that to fly, now the pesky thing is gone and will never bother me again, will you explain why removing my kidney was necessary?”

“Human beings need only one to thrive.”

“And mine were both perfectly functional!” Will exclaims. “I would have felt better had you sold it on the black market. But instead you served it on pumpernickel the next morning.” Will refuses to admit that it was rather good.

Hannibal takes the higher road by not reminding the boy how much he enjoyed it.

“This procedure is typically reserved for those individuals experiencing an ejaculatory dysfunction, and in veterinary medicine for the collection of semen samples for use in study or breeding programs.”

“Hannibal,” Will pleads, “listen to yourself. You can’t possibly -”

“I can,” he interjects. “And I will. The volume required for my purposes far surpasses what you produce with consistency. By the time I allowed you to recover, the first collection would have already begun to spoil. This is a renewable resource, as you’ve shown by spreading, spattering, or spraying it on any surface available to you. It is hardly the same as harvesting organs.”

“How much do you need if you can't get it out of me naturally?” Will asks, laughing. “What are you going to do with it?”

Hannibal doesn’t deign to answer and Will considers the medical equipment on the table, laid out and cleaned, shiny and good as new. Hannibal cares for few things as much as he does his tools and the boy he uses them on most. With a groan Will drops back into the pillows and stretches his legs under the sheets.

He just wanted to go for a walk today.

He just wanted to read a goddamn book.

He has to remind himself that seven years ago he chose - with true and delighted intentions - to marry this man. And death hasn't come to part them yet, even with the organ harvesting of recent years.

“Just answer me that, please,” Will asks him, eyes narrowed. “What for? Why?”

“I have a desire to compose a pairing, both savory and sweet,” Hannibal tells the awful boy glowering at him from the bed. He should have expected nothing less - indeed, from his derisive snort, Hannibal is certain that he did not. Hannibal works his lips between his teeth and settles the last instrument back to its place. “I wish to recreate oysters-in-shell with your production, chilled and spritzed with fresh Lapithkiotiki lemons from Cyprus and ground black pepper. Further - and with the intent to please you, of all ungrateful boys - I wish to create a creme brulee in which you will provide the primary ingredient for the custard.”

Will just watches him, eyes flicking between Hannibal’s own before he just swallows and looks away. What more did he expect, really?

“Will your hunger for me ever fade?” He asks, amusement turning his tone to something warmer than his exclamations before.

“I’m afraid not,” Hannibal admits. He grasps Will’s cheek and lifts his chin, touching a kiss to his reluctant smile before releasing him. Making his way to the bathroom to wash his hands anew, he continues. “As you have proved my ruination in both the seduction and claiming of bright young things, so you have proved the ruination of my appetites. The taste of your sweat, your skin, saliva and semen - all of it has become for me the most particular and necessary ingredient when I wish to truly enjoy a flavor both complex and subtle. Your organs - willingly relinquished, I’ll remind you - have been delicacies unparalleled.”

He flicks his hands dry and untrusting of the towels on the rack, holds them outward as he returns.

“Terrible boy, how is it that you take pride in so much foolishness and so little in this? In you, I taste all our years together. I could not readily find another who satisfies me so,” he adds, gaze narrowing a little. “And I cannot imagine that you would wish me to try.”

“One way or another they would become dinner for the evening, if you did,” Will agrees, watching him with narrowed eyes. He is greyer, but no less handsome. There are more lines on his features, but he is no less beautiful. Still striking, still inescapably dangerous and still a creature of habit and a keeper of promises.

He told Will he would find ways to consume him, devour and relish him, without losing his little wolf. Will slips a hand beneath the sheets to stroke himself, hardly to stimulate, but certainly enough to feel.

“How would you have me, then?”

“Willing.”

“I will allow stubborn,” Will grins. “How else?”

Hannibal steps closer, hands held out like a surgeon and chin raised, appraising. Will shivers at his carriage, the easy and capable dominance that moves within every muscle of his body. He’s never had a thing for doctors, though he had clients who liked to slap on latex gloves before they fingered him. Will wonders if it isn’t too late to form a new fetish solely from how Hannibal carries himself.

“On your knees and forearms,” he says, voice lowering as one’s pulse does in the cold. “Presenting yourself in the easiest way to facilitate entry, so that I may gather from beneath you.”

“You’re going to milk me.”

“Yes.”

Will glances to the medical equipment on the table once more, perhaps just to see it again, to allow his mind to understand that a lot of it will be used on him for the sole purpose of Hannibal’s whim and pleasure.

He has rarely loved himself more than when he is used just for that purpose.

Will licks his lips and kicks the blankets down to the end of the bed before turning to his stomach and shifting his hips. He is semi-hard, simply from waking that way, and the anticipation of pain and strange experiences warms his skin and pulses blood down to gather between his legs.

He lives for this. Much as he will deny it, Hannibal knows, and Will himself knows just as well.

To his elbows first, then, hands clasped together, as Will shifts his body to coil and arch to get his knees beneath him. One motion, another, all elegant and feline and practiced until he is on all fours as asked. With a brief look over his shoulder, teeth flashing bright in a grin, Will wiggles his hips and arches his back, spreading his thighs comfortably wide for Hannibal to see.

He could simply, as Will crudely put it, fuck him. He would enjoy that just as much, a hand over Will’s mouth to shorten his breath and bend back his head, cock plunging hard past the ring of trembling muscle, unstretched. He could use the lubricant to slick his fingers and enter them one after the next after the next until his knuckles slipped inside and half his arm followed.

Hannibal is tempted, sorely tempted, but there will be time for all that later. For now, he has a specific purpose in mind, one he awoke imagining and has been unable to shake until only now, when that itch has begun to feel scratched. Never before has Hannibal forced an unwilling orgasm from this boy; always, they have been desired, even when muddled by choking sobs and tears and blood.

His heart beats a little faster.

“The more you are able to relax, the easier the process will be,” he tells Will, settling into a comfortable and familiar old cadence reserved only for patients now long dispersed. Hannibal resists the urge to stroke Will’s back, the pretty dimpled bend that pushes his bottom high. He slips on latex gloves and Will laughs at the creak of them. Lubricant from a pump is spattered Hannibal’s fingers, and with deliberate disregard to warming it, he twists two fingers into Will’s waiting hole.

Will makes a sound and ducks his head. Immediately, his body responds. It is trained to. Taught to. Encouraged to. Made to. Immediately, Will arches deeper and presents further. Immediately, he relaxes on reflex because he is so used to this, always wants it when it happens.

“Do you realize the more you advise me to relax the less likely I’ll be able to?” Will muses, biting his lip on a moan when a third finger is added. Gloves are rare. The sensation is novel.

The second glove, hardly slicked as much as Hannibal’s fingers, works his cock in twisting downward tugs. It would be humiliating if it didn’t feel so good, no warmth in his touch nor desire, but almost a cool disregard that does little more than stoke the heat building in Will’s belly. He whimpers against the pillow and tilts his hips in a lazy thrust, but at this angle - and with Hannibal’s fingers in his ass - he can scarcely complete the motion.

Hannibal circles softly across Will’s prostate, firm and healthy, no larger than a walnut. Distantly, Hannibal recalls when it felt only the size of an almond, and muffles the sound he can feel building in his throat with a low hum.

“Anaesthesia is recommended to keep patients of any species calm. In those animals where it’s impractical to do so, such as bulls, restraints are used. You, remarkable boy, require neither.”

“Not if it all feels like this,” Will laughs, snorting softly.

“It will not.”

With this pleased declaration, Hannibal withdraws his touch and swaps out his gloves for a fresh pair. There’s little need for this level of sanitization, he knows. They play far more dangerous games than this on a regular basis, with far more potential vectors. It’s worth it for the pleasure of finding this aspect of himself again, a skilled surgeon and capable physician. It’s worth it for the sound Will makes when Hannibal dramatically lets his glove snap against his wrist.

He takes up the speculum, testing it with a squeeze, locking it in place. He loosens it then and slicks it copiously with lubricant. This is warmed no more than his fingers were before, and he clucks his tongue when the first contact of cold metal to hot skin makes Will flinch and his cock swell harder.

“If you wish for me to make it more uncomfortable than it will already be,” Hannibal says, “I assure you, I can.”

Will makes a sound that doesn't evolve into words and spreads his fingers against the sheets before curling them again. He’s had stranger things up his ass. He has had much wider things up his ass. Surely this isn’t enough to coil him cringing?

He steadies his hips and clenches the muscles only once before relaxing again. It wouldn't do to anger the man when he is performing something so delicate as this.

The speculum is unforgiving and hard. Cold. Slick and steady it moves into Will’s body and he accepts it, his breath hitching just a little when he feels the unfamiliar end of the implement press against the warm cheeks of his ass.

Hannibal’s delight in this obedience is conveyed by a simple, entirely unprofessional kiss against Will’s bottom. A little touch. A warm, fond thing. Gratitude and forewarning all at once, as Hannibal begins to open the device.

Will’s voice breaks into a laugh, high and alarmed. He clutches the sheets and curls his toes, lithe legs lifting and flopping back to the bed again. His erection doesn’t falter, stiff enough now that the pressure pushes a few glossy drips from its tip. It isn’t a bad feeling, though it pinches a little. It’s strange, stranger still when the speculum is cranked wider.

“Hannibal,” he gasps, warning. It’s a raw exposure of his very core, making him bare in a way that transcends mere clothing. Will wants suddenly to cover himself, to stop his husband from watching, but he only fists the blankets tighter and moans.

He is rewarded with another soft stroke, too light now to be enough to bring him to orgasm.

“You should see yourself,” Hannibal murmurs. “Extraordinary boy.”

Will makes another helpless sound and buries his face in the sheets. There is nothing, now, that Hannibal does not know about him. Nothing he has not seen or witnessed. They have carved each other to the bone as much with cruel words as with kind ones. They have held each other through horrors and pleasures alike. There is no one in the world Will trusts more than the man who owns his heart.

“It’s hard to breathe,” he admits softly, his entire body poised to tension, trembling, the precursor of the pain that will leave him blissfully sore already titillating him more than he can say. “Tell me what you see.”

Hannibal makes a warm sound, heavy and low as a tiger’s purr. He removes his gloves - with requisite and performative snaps - and tosses them to the floor. Hot hands settle to Will’s thighs and firm thumbs rub the quivering muscles of his thighs to peace again as Hannibal settles to the edge of the bed. He is hardly staring into the orifice now spread gaping for him, beyond a clinical eye to look for anything immediately out of place. With far more fascination, he takes in Will’s posture, his trembling, his stiff cock unfaltering hard.

“Youth,” he says. “And the good health that defines it. Strength in subservience to the one who knows you better than you know yourself.” He pauses. “Especially now.”

“You’re staring at my ass.”

“A little.”

Will laughs but the sensation that ripples through him clenches his muscles against unyielding metal. His voice tilts to a moan, a single note pitching high, and as Hannibal stands he caresses the boy’s back where he remains bent.

“There is never a moment,” Hannibal says, “when you are anything less than the most exquisite creature on which I’ve ever laid eyes.”

Will laughs again and curls his fingers hard against the bed. This vulnerability is unwelcome and that sensation is enough to make him feel incredible. Humiliation and power at being so submissive to a man whom Will has known - and has seen - to go down on his knees before him should on a whim call him to worship.

He feels extraordinary. He feels exquisite.

Everything aches, and he knows that this is nothing in and of itself. More will come. Pain and pleasure and enlightenment and everything in between.

He seeks with a trembling hand between his legs, not to upset the speculum but to feel what he cannot see. He curses, soft and surprised, letting his fingers gently touch against the metal before he slides them over his cock instead. He moves his hips only enough to settle comfortably, he does not close his legs, and then he bites his lip and retracts his hand once more, turning to regard Hannibal with wide bright eyes.

“A few moments more,” Hannibal assures him, though his smile hardly does the same. Will’s laughter flutters from him without pause now, unceasingly nervous and bright all at once. He isn’t certain that it’s enough to stop the tears he can feel like heat in his eyes.

It doesn’t matter. Hannibal will love that, too.

The doctor takes up the probe, already plugged and tested in the basement earlier this morning, on Hannibal’s own leg. Will will see the mark later and know that Hannibal was not without his own sacrifice in this undertaking. Conductivity runs a risk of spreading if he were to slick it. Another crank of the speculum forces Will wide enough to accept without the need for lubrication.

“There will be a series of pulses, three at a time. By the third set at this power, the procedure should - barring unforeseen ejaculatory difficulties - be complete.”

“Difficulties?”

“If you’re to move unexpectedly and make me miss my mark,” Hannibal considers. “If you were to faint, though I imagine the results could still be gathered. If there are internal blockages, though that’s hardly been an issue for you before,” he says, pausing to delight in his own pun.

“Enough,” Will says, shaking his head. He settles his knees firm and curls his toes. He folds his fingers together and rests his head against his wrists as if in prayer. “Just - no, wait!” The exclamation comes just as Hannibal nestles Will’s cock inside a glass tube, wide bottomed.

“We mustn’t fear solely from unfamiliarity,” Hannibal advises, and as Will takes a breath to argue, Hannibal slides the device against his prostate and begins its pulses.

The sound Will makes is childishly frightened; loud, sharp, petering out into a sob as he bites his own arm to keep quiet. He doesn’t know how long one pulse lasts, if three have happened, if the voltage has changed. He knows nothing. He can barely breathe, he can't see, and he isn’t sure if the sounds he hears are his own or made by the machine tormenting him.

It hits a peak where everything Will feels overwhelms him and his hearing rings. His body gives in. He can feel his release pulse from him in time with his erratic heartbeat, in time with the shocks striking every nerve in his body at once like a reverberating gong.

“Hannibal...” He tries, weak and breathless and crying, now, in earnest. He stays still simply because he hasn't the mind to move, as much trained to take pain as aching for it himself. When he finally tries to relax his fingers, he finds that he can’t. In a wild moment of panic, akin to when an attempted murder found a belt around his own throat instead, Will wonders if this is how he ends.

Hannibal sets the probe aside and gives Will’s cock a quick tug and shake to drip it empty. Setting the jar aside, he moves quickly to loosen and extract the speculum, and careful not to move the boy who’s shaking so hard with contractions that the bed rattles with him, Hannibal moves quickly to sit beside him. It was exhilarating, thrilling to watch convulsions snare him harder than any orgasm or sexual act ever could. Hannibal’s heart pounds with uncharacteristic unsteadiness as Will’s eyes open wide, briefly unseeing and dark-lashed with tears.

“Ferocious Will,” he whispers. Stroking Will’s hair from his face, cupping his cheek with his hand, Hannibal lays praise on him as thickly as he laid justifications for this act not long before. “The convulsions have passed already. Breathe, silly boy. Do you know that even stallions cannot withstand so much as you? My little wolf.”

Will’s breathing does not ease, not yet. It shudders and tilts, hitches and moans and breaks as he does. When Will can finally move he immediately curls in on himself with a cry and presses to the man who had done this to him.

Beneath the fire that curled into his bones and held him tormented, the cool tendrils of pleasure begin to seep. Will lets himself cry because working to stop the tears would pull more effort from him. He allows every stroke of Hannibal’s hands to ease him, every touch to warm him when his entire body feels as though it has frozen solid.

“I couldn’t move,” he says after a moment, another fit of nervous giggling taking him as he catches Hannibal’s hand and nuzzles into it. “Fuck, I couldn't move if I tried.”

“Would that I’d thought to arrange a camera for us,” Hannibal murmurs against his hair, “so you could see every muscle brought forth beneath your skin.”

“Goddammit,” Will whispers, laughing, crying, everything all at once. Hannibal allows the curses - their years together have made him softer than he once was in this - and kisses the sweat from his brow. He kisses his blotchy, damp cheek. He kisses the corner of his mouth and tastes the spit there.

Will feels empty, stripped bare and poured out entirely. His belly hurts the most, but the ache seems carved into his bones, dug deeply into a pain he’s never experienced before. He does not doubt Hannibal’s selfishness, that much he’s come to accept; neither does doubt his desire, however, for Will to feel something new.

Something extraordinary.

Something that few others could stand to bear without benefit of sedation or restraint.

“You will read today,” Hannibal tells him. “Perhaps a walk when your limbs return to usefulness. You’ll fight me…”

“Fuck off.”

Hannibal hums, smiling wry as he draws himself up to sit. “Just so,” he agrees, “but you will work the tension out by doing so. And my hands will ease what strains remain after.”

“Will I get to at least taste the dessert and dinner I suffered for?” Will asks him, nuzzling deliberately against Hannibal’s pants, leaving traces of tears and spit against them, marking him as his once more.

“In bed, perhaps.”

“Careful,” Will snorts. “You’ll spoil me.”

Tremors continue to pass through his body, he continues to cling to Hannibal as much for genuine need for comfort as because he is too tired - ironically - to let him go.

When he does, Hannibal bends to kiss him and Will kisses back.

“Rest.”

“Right.”

“Read.”

Will laughs softly, pressing a hand to his face. “Alright.” As Hannibal stands to move away, Will catches his wrist. “Wait.” Lips red and bitten press together and part. “Can I see? Can I see how much I -”

“Of course,” Hannibal tells him, indulgent and satisfied in the extreme. He takes up the sample to show to him, but does not hand it over, all too aware of Will’s petulant destructive tendencies. In the glass beaker, shining white semen glistens pearlescent in the morning sun. It’s half-full, several loads’ worth pulsed free all at once.

“Holy shit,” Will whispers.

“You see? Nothing I do is without cause, in some way or another,” he says, bending once more to kiss Will’s brow. “And now we begin the second part of our work.”

“Cooking,” Will asks, wary.

“And marking the speed of your recovery,” smiles Hannibal, “to see how quickly your empty vessel becomes full once more.”


End file.
